With all of the options for cruising destinations in this part of the world, and not much first-hand experience, we are always looking for input on where to go. So, when two of the three people we talked to in the Juneau marina mentioned Skagway, we thought "let’s give it a look." A further part of the calculus goes back to the golden years of radio when Sergeant Preston of the Northwest Mounted Police and his great dog Yukon King was our favorite radio drama – and Skagway was frequently mentioned.

Skagway lies at the head of the Lynn Canal, a sixty-mile long glaciated channel.

The views are stunning, and the glaciers and waterfalls plentiful.

Skagway is the former entry point for the last big gold rush on the North American continent. The infamous Chilikoot Trail starts nearby. This is where Jack London started out from during his year in the gold fields of the Klondike. It is also reputed to be well preserved by the National Park Service. So, we were expecting a laid back, bucolic, ghost-town ambiance.

You can imagine our surprise as we rounded the bend, headed toward the harbor, and were confronted with four mega-cruiseships.

These vessels rotate every day, so there’s always a new crowd of visitors – 900,000 a year!

Main Street (actually Broadway) looks like a set from Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm. Some of the buildings have been restored, and all the new construction looks "old."

There are 42 jewelry stores in town, one good hardware store, a market, and even a health food store.

The health food store has a bakery associated with it, and the bread was hot out of the oven. This is 15 blocks removed from the tourist area of town.

Once away a bit from the city center, Skagway has a small town look to it. There are many nice small homes, and the occasional classic, of which we could not resist taking a photo.

This is an interesting business model for a town. They are inundated with visitors buying things and walking around during the four-month summer. But then they have eight months to relax, having earned their year’s wages. The town has 1200 permanent residents, of which a third leave for the winter.

The marina is low key, well kept up, with an interesting mix of work boats, fishing boats, and cruisers.

We were surprised to see this little critter scooting around the dock. Would you believe it is a…mink!

We’ve mentioned before that one of the positive things about staying in a marina is the people you meet. When we first pulled into Skagway, Craig McCormick and Terry Jacobsen came by to say hello. They’ve both lived in these parts for a long time, and like many Alaskans, they are professional seamen. They have their own boats on which they fish and do charters, and they work as a team running a pair of support boats for a local hydroelectric construction project. The crew boat is shown above. Steve got a ride on it one morning.

Terry and Craig both live in Haines, a few miles back up the channel.

Their other support vessel is this Vietnam-era landing craft. It’s got a pair of Jimmy diesels and a bow thruster – and it looks like a ball to drive.

Terry came out from North Dakota and fell in love with the area. But he admits to having a place on the Big Island of Hawaii as a getaway during the winter.

Craig hails from Southern California and heads south in the winter to Arizona to visit his dad. Both Craig and his dad are power pilots and in fact they’ve visited Steve’s glider club in Tucson.

We spent an interesting evening hearing all sorts of Alaskan tales during dinner. Of course a lot of these consisted of bear stories. Our favorite is the one about a friend who was asleep in his tent when a black bear stuck his head in and gave him a good sniff. The fact that the story has a happy ending indicates that the bear was well fed!

One of the things we’ve been curious about is how the locals cope with the winter. The cold we can understand. But the lack of sunlight would really get on our nerves. Turns out it is a problem. However, using full spectrum light bulbs, helps to alleviate the lack of sun. The kids in Skagway have a large indoor recreation center. After school this is the focus of their energy. Occasionally the locals will take the ferry across to Haines, or the 120-mile drive up to White Horse in the Canadian Yukon.

We think we’ll confine our visits to the summer…